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If you constantly dwell on the details of who your partner once dated and/or had sex with, there’s a good chance you’re suffering from what’s known “retroactive jealousy”. There’s also a good chance you may not even have heard of retroactive jealousy before, or have any idea there was actually a name for your condition.

This is because retroactive jealousy — an unhealthy obsession with a partner’s romantic and/or sexual past — is probably one of the most confusing conditions out there.

If you have retroactive jealousy, a further twist of the knife comes with the fact that you probably don’t know why you’re feeling the way you do.

Understanding what retroactive jealousy is and how to overcome it, takes some sufferers months, years or even decades.

But don’t panic. There’s absolutely no reason why it should take that long at all.

And as you’re on this page, I’m guessing you want to learn exactly what is retroactive jealousy and how to get over it ASAP.

And that’s what I’m going to do in this post.

As retroactive jealousy is such a confusing condition for the sufferer, I want to lay out some bare facts and help you get over it by tackling the following areas:

This constant replaying of the past, and confusion over why it’s happening, results in a bewildering array of negative emotions:

disgust

anger

fear

judgment

anxiety

betrayal

doubt

jealousy

envy

self-hatred

And so on.

The trouble is, this often results in the retroactive jealousy sufferer not knowing what exactly it is they’re feeling. Or why.

This confusion is the root of much of the problem with dealing with retroactive jealousy.

As the old saying goes, it’s vital to know your enemy if you want to defeat it, but more on this later.

Retroactive Jealousy Symptom #3: Negative Actions

This combination of repetitive negative thoughts and emotions, usually results in a variety of negative actions.

Here are some of the most common actions associated with retroactive jealousy that you may find yourself indulging in:

Playing scenarios over and over in your mind: the very process of getting stuck like a broken record on a particular moment in your partner’s past is an action in itself. Constantly mulling over what happened, and why you feel the way you do, can take up many hours of a retroactive jealousy sufferer’s day.

Digging to find out more about retroactive jealousy: as a sufferer of retroactive jealousy, it’s likely that you’re spending as much time trying to figure out why you’re feeling the way you do, as you do actually feeling it. And this means constantly Googling terms like “girlfriend’s sexual past” “boyfriend’s past lovers” and so on trying to figure out what’s going on in your head.

Digging to find out more about the past: you may also find yourself wanting to know more about your partner’s past in an effort to gain some sort of control over the situation. This often means going through their phone, Facebook account, photos, etc. Needless to say, this is very risky business.

Deliberately trying to make a partner feel bad: another symptom of retroactive jealousy can be a desire to lash out at a partner, endlessly quiz them, make snide remarks and generally make them feel bad about what they did in the past.

What Causes Retroactive Jealousy?

In a word, knowledge.

Retroactive jealousy is always triggered by knowledge of a partner’s past — personal information and intimate details that get lodged in the brain and spiral out of all control.

Everyone has their own story of how retroactive jealousy got triggered: whether it’s having “the talk”, hearing a story, or having a f*** buddy call your partner at 2 a.m. for a late night hook-up. (The last one is mine by the way.)

Once retroactive jealousy has taken hold, it can be triggered by anything:

A song on the radio, seeing a name that’s the same as an ex, a location where you know they used to go, and so on.

In particularly severe cases of retrograde jealousy, it can forgo these triggers altogether and become an ever-present sensation at the forefront of the mind.

It’s not unusual in my clients for a partner’s past to be the first thing they think about when they wake up and the last thing before they go to sleep.

However, there is no single, magic reason why one person may end up suffering from a retroactive jealousy disorder, while another with a partner with comparable experiences, doesn’t.

You feel the way you do for a variety of reasons but, overall, retroactive jealousy can be caused by:

Genetics: on a fundamental level, some people are more prone to fall victim to negative emotions such as jealousy, anger, fear, and so on than others, due to their genetic make-up.

Evolution: millions of years ago, a desire to stop our partner’s from straying so we could pass on our genes, resulted in us developing negative emotions concerning them, such as jealousy, envy, and judgment. The fact that you “hate” your partner’s past is a direct throwback to this period in the dawn of human history.

Society: not all cultures suffer from retroactive jealousy. Certain cultures and tribes around the world share their partners openly and experience no jealousy whatsoever, which means it’s partly a product of society and dependent on where you were raised.

Upbringing: the influences you had as a child growing up can greatly impact on whether you end up suffering from retroactive jealousy or not. Parents, school, religion, society, etc. can all help determine your attitudes toward marriage, love, casual sex, idealism, the opposite sex, and so on.

Dating history: people who’ve been cheated on tend on average to be more likely to suffer from retroactive jealousy than those who haven’t. A lack of trust plays a big part in the condition, and so naturally, if you’ve had it broken by someone in the past, you’re more likely to fear it happening again.

Physical and mental health: what we eat, how much we exercise, and our mental state in general, can all play a part in exacerbating retroactive jealousy. Both our body and our brains need the right kind of fuel and if you’re not giving it to them, they can act out by becoming obsessed with trivialities.

Lack of self-confidence: the majority of retroactive jealousy sufferers have, in some form or another, a lower opinion of themselves than they should. This results in comparing themselves to their partner’s ex-lovers and invariably coming off second best.

Your retroactive jealousy may be being caused by one, two or more of these factors, but the two main emotions associated with it are fear and judgment.

Retroactive Jealousy and Fear

That feeling of being threatened by these people in your partner’s past, is due to fear.

On some level, you’re worried that you could lose them. But not to these ex-lovers from the past, but to someone new in the present.

In actual fact, you don’t really care about your partner’s former lovers — they’re just representations your mind has created of your worst fear: to lose your partner to somebody else.

The reason why you have this fear is probably down to a lack of self-belief.

If you were 100 percent super-confident in yourself and your relationship, would you still be consumed by incessant mulling over your partner’s romantic and/or sexual past?

Tom Bower, Tony Blair’s biographer, writes “He has this unstoppable self-belief and never ever thinks about the past.”

Fear and self-confidence are truly interlinked, and this is something you should work on if you want to overcome retroactive jealousy.

Retroactive Jealousy and Judgment

Another huge reason why you’re afflicted currently by retroactive jealousy could well be because you’re judging your partner’s past actions.

Without judgment it’s highly likely that much of your suffering would stop.

But right now you can’t help feeling that they shouldn’t have done certain things that don’t chime with your worldview.

This explains how people who are full of confidence in themselves and their relationship can still suffer from retroactive jealousy.

And why it doesn’t matter how many times your partner tells you they love you.

You know they love you. You know they don’t care about their ex-lover any more.

But your egoic “unconscious self” needs to create conflict in order to justify its existence.

And this where all your fears and insecurities are coming from.

Forgive me if this sounds all a little esoteric, but if you want to start getting over retroactive jealousy it’s important to gain control over your ego.

A great place to start is by reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

Sign Up to My Course, Coaching, or Buy the Book

I have a number of ways I can help you beat retroactive jealousy for good.

Read the book: The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure: How To Stop Being Jealous Of Your Partner’s Past in 12 Stepsbreaks shows you in twelve steps how to get over retroactive jealousy. Click here to get started.

Download the course:Overcoming Retrograde Jealousy 101 uses video, audio and other teaching methods to help you beat retroactive jealousy once and for all. Click here to get started.

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To learn how to overcome a retroactive jealousy disorder, in twelve simple steps, click on the button below to grab a copy of The Ultimate Retroactive Jealousy Cure: How To Stop Being Jealous Of Your Partner’s Past in 12 Steps.

BEAT YOUR RETROACTIVE JEALOUSY FOR GOOD

I am so thankful for purchasing your book. It not only saved my relationship, but it saved my time, and my eternal happiness. I can't believe I can say that I know I am going to overcome this jealousy that has plagued my mind.